


Certain Words

by cre8iveovadose



Series: Second Chance [11]
Category: Glee
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Abuse, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 15:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4881739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cre8iveovadose/pseuds/cre8iveovadose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian has a list of words that he can’t say and one day, he is forced to share the list with Nick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Certain Words

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Talk and description of self-harm, triggery language, abuse, description of (bad) therapy

There were certain words Sebastian Smythe couldn’t stand. Reading them made his mouth dry and his arms itch. Hearing them made his fingers fidget. Saying them made him feel nauseous. He didn’t come across them often but when he did, they reduced him to naught but his addiction.

The first aversion to a word had come across when he’d first been caught out for his self-harm. The therapist had sat him down in her office and handed him a bunch of information pamphlets. They had all been about self-harm and depression but had only called it ‘self-mutilation’. _Mutilation_. Sebastian had only been able to think about how what he was doing to himself was supposed to be considered “mutilation”.

.

_“Self-mutilation is nothing to be ashamed about, Sebastian. Many people have struggled with it and many people have recovered. But you need to try your hardest to stop mutilati-”_

_“Stop!” Sebastian shouted. He threw the pamphlets onto the coffee table between him and his therapist, Nicole._

_“What’s wrong, Sebastian? What’s upset you?” Nicole was the only person Sebastian had ever met who could become so condescending so quickly._

_“Don’t – don’t use words like that. What I do – it’s not_ mutilation _, it’s just cutting. It’s just hurting myself. Mutilation is … mutilation is fucked up, the kind of stuff psychopaths and serial killers do to the people they murder. Mutilation is what happened to Freddy Krueger and the people in those Saw movies and the creatures out of American Horror Story. What I do … it’s not that.”_

_“Sebastian,” Nicole reached for him but he pulled away._

_Tears pricked at his eyes and a lump closed his throat. “It’s not what I do. I do a lot of messed up things but that isn’t one of them.”_

_._

Sebastian had struggled with that for a long time. Everyone he came across seemed to think that was the proper term for what he did. He wasted no time in correcting them but he grew tired of having to explain why they shouldn’t use that term. The negative connotations to the word were the problem; the things that had become associated with it in his mind. On bad days Sebastian knew that if certain words popped up they had the power to control whether he relapsed or not.

‘Slice’ was another word Sebastian had a lot of trouble with. It always made him feel like there was someone poised behind him ready to grab his arm and force him to hurt himself. He blamed Jesse for that. Though at the time Sebastian had only seen it as a blessing.

.

_“Here, give me your arm,” Jesse murmured as he moved to kneel over Sebastian. They had been making out when Jesse had pulled away abruptly. Sebastian stretched out his bare arm, watching the scars shine in the light as his boyfriend pulled something out of a drawer beside the bed._

_“Jesse, what are you doing?” Sebastian asked. He couldn’t tell if he was nervous or excited. He guessed it was much one in the same._

_“I want to help you,” Jesse answered. Sebastian got a glimpse then of what Jesse was holding. A silver penknife, the blade speckled with blood._

_“J-Jess, I don’t know about this…”_

_“You like the pain don’t you? And the blood? You said you had a bad day – let me help make it better.”_

_Sebastian swallowed before opening his mouth to protest but Jesse had already dug the blade sharply into his arm. The pain felt different and wrong. Sebastian had lost control over it but the endorphins still race through him and he found it hard to fight back._

_“I love the way this blade just …_ slices _through skin.”_

_“Jesse, it hurts!” Sebastian gasped._

_“One more,” Jesse whispered as the blade bit down again. Sebastian knew he should be worried about what was going on but the pain washed over him and he felt himself sink deeper into Jesse’s mattress._

_Jesse wiped the knife clean before exchanging it for a bandage. Sebastian watched as Jesse wound it around his arm before he lay down beside him and pulled the younger boy against his chest._

_“I love you, Sebastian,” Jesse whispered in his boyfriend’s ear._

_“Love you too.”_

.

It wasn’t until he was going out with Nick that he added any other words to the list. They had been home alone at Sebastian’s one night and had decided to try cooking a meal for themselves.

.

_Nick held out the vegetable peeler to Sebastian. “Do you wanna peel the potatoes?”_

_Sebastian tightened his grip on the edge of the bench, staring at the vegetable peeler with an intense concentration that only came from trying to ignore the urges._

_“Seb, what’s wrong?” Nick asked as he set the vegetable peeler down again._

_“Hang on,” Sebastian whispered as he tried to take deep breaths._

_A few long moments passed before Nick walked around the island bench to pull a now-shaking Sebastian into his arms._

_“It’s okay. Whatever I did, it’s okay,” Nick murmured. He rubbed Sebastian’s back and pressed kisses to his hair._

_Sebastian pulled away and shook his head. “No, no it’s not okay.”_

_Nick frowned. “Sebastian, what’s going on?”_

_Sebastian’s eyes flicked to the vegetable peeler before he looked back to Nick. “Sometimes certain words just …_ trigger _me.”_

_“W-What words? So that I can stop saying them.”_

_Sebastian closed his eyes and took another deep breath. “I can’t – I can’t say them. There are words that make not cutting so much harder. I avoid them mostly but sometimes they just … slip through.”_

_Nick glanced around before he spied a notepad on the fridge, a pen hanging from a chain beside it. He pulled it off the fridge and slid it across the bench to Sebastian._

_“Write them down for me. We need to talk about this.”_

_Sebastian sniffled but complied before pushing the notepad back to Nick. There were only three words but Nick could understand why Sebastian didn’t like the words._ Mutilation. Slice. Peel.

_“Okay, I’ll do the potatoes. You chop up the other vegetables and then while everything is cooking I’m gonna hug you and never let go.”_

_Sebastian couldn’t hold back the laugh that broke free from within as Nick stepped around the bench again and kissed him._

_“I love you,” Nick said._

_“I love you, too,” Sebastian murmured._

.

There might have been certain words that made Sebastian’s skin crawl but he knew there were many more words that made him feel alive and happy. And Nick reminded him of those words every single day.


End file.
